![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/madonna-620.jpg\" "\\"madonna-620\\"")
<\/a>The pop star during one of her visit to Malawi<\/p><\/div>American pop diva Madonna\u2019s Malawi charity on Friday pledged to continue its work as the country makes a new beginning under President Joyce Banda.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a critical time for Malawi as President Banda attempts to steer Malawi back toward more successful times. It is also a crucial moment for the friends of Malawi to continue to show their support,\u201d Raising Malawi said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cRaising Malawi remains a committed friend to Malawi and has expanded support in 2012 into the area of education.\u201d<\/p>\n
Banda was sworn in on April 7 as Malawi\u2019s first female president after the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika two days earlier.<\/p>\n
Raising Malawi in January announced it would build 10 rural schools, changing focus after abandoning a failed $15 million-project to set up a girls academy.<\/p>\n
The plans angered education officials in the country over not being consulted on the change of focus.<\/p>\n
Ground was broken on the first school in central Malawi in February and two more schools are set to be finished later this year, it said.<\/p>\n
Immediately after coming to power Banda moved to heal breaches with donors that had been alienated by Mutharika\u2019s oppressive economic policies.<\/p>\n
Several had suspended funding, including the United States, the IMF, and Britain which previously contributed 19 million pounds ($30 million, 23 million euro) in aid a year.<\/p>\n
Madonna, whose adoptions of two children from Malawi were embroiled in controversy, has not visited the country since she dropped the academy plans last year.<\/p>\n
The singer has poured millions into helping children in Malawi, where 39 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American pop diva Madonna\u2019s Malawi charity on Friday pledged to continue its work as the country makes a new beginning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[328,466,286,2133,294],"class_list":["post-9277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-charity","tag-joyce-banda","tag-madonna","tag-pop-star","tag-raising-malawi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}